Time
by A Girl In NYC
Summary: He offered his life for my survival. I never thought I would see him again. He is a man, changed into a monster. Everything changes in time. Bane/OC
1. Introduction

"All things truly wicked start from innocence."  
- **Ernest Hemingway**

* * *

"Wake up. Love, get _up_. You need to go. _Now_."

His British accent is urgent on the word, alarming me as I slept. His rough hands shook my shoulders alarmingly as I slept, my body curled in a bawl with his jacket over me, a symbol of his protection over me. My eyes squinting, I notice it's dark outside still. The sun isn't up. I look up at him in question.

His handsome face looks down at me with fear.

I have _never_ seen fear in him.

He has dark blue eyes, stubble around his mouth and on his chin. He rakes a hand through his light brown hair in stress, and he says urgently again, "_Please_, Chloe. You need to get up!"

I sit up, rubbing my right eye.

Not aware of my impending fate, of the seperation about to take place.

While struggling to wake up, a few masked mercenaries charge into our cell, reaching for me, and he leaves my bedside. I back up against the cold bars in fear, as he violently hits them, or throws them into the cell's bars, killing or knocking them out. I hear their bones crack, the twist of their arms.

Blood from the attacking mercenaries spread on the cobblestone beneath me, pools of red liquid staining the stone.

He's killed them in my defense.

I tremble.

"What. . .what's going on?" I stammer, barely getting the words out of my mouth when he comes after me and physically lifts me and has me in his arms. He covers his head with a hood, and his mouth as well. His eyes are only visible.

He is stronger than anyone I've ever met, proving so as he carries me like a child out of the cell, which has been destroyed during the riots, prisoners going insane.

As prisoners fight, while havoc and chaos wreak on the prison like a virus, he runs with me in his arms. I hold onto him for life, and I tighten my grip. He settles me down behind a few barrels, the two of us are together, hiding.

Only for a moment.

"What's going on?" I stammer, looking at him, tears stinging the sides of my eyelids. I attempt to blink them away.

"They're going to kill you if you don't escape," He removes the covering of his mouth, our faces inches apart, "You need to get out as fast as you can. Don't use the rope. Jump. Once you're out, run as fast and hard as you can. Get as far away as possible. Do you understand me?"

I let a tear slide down my cheek and hit my trembling lip. I nod, knowing he is looking after me.

"I won't go without you." I insist, my voice uneven and quivering.

I looked at his eyes, the most emotional and tell-tale aspect of him. You could tell everything he was thinking just from looking in his eyes, there was so much emotion in them.

I felt my heart throb so rapidly, I swore it was hitting my ribcage.

"No. I won't make it. Not this time. Only you." He says quietly, looking down, then at me.

I looked down, trembling, "No. . .no, I won't leave you here to die."

"Calm down, love. Now's not the time for fear. That comes later." He said, quoting something I had said, cupping the right side of my face in his hand.

He always knew what to say.

I nodded, a small smile coming to my lips, my eyes brimming with tears. A few tears fell from my eyes, but I tried to smile through them. I arched my eyebrows and gave in, closing my eyes and kissing him, linking my arms around his neck.

"I love you." I murmur, and he kisses me one last time in response.

We are together for the last time.

We break apart. He puts the cover over his mouth again, and looks around him. He leans over me and lifts me easily, running, carrying me to the stone walls, ropes hanging down in means of escape attempts. He brings me to the stone and helps me.

As he lets me go, prisoners go after him, charging at him. He is strong, muscular.

But not enough to take on fifteen prisoners at once.

Tears run down my face as I stand above on a stone platform, the night sky above me inviting me to escape into the outside world. I look down and I see them attacking him. "Go! Chloe, _damnit_! Go!" He barks at me, the attackers tearing at him, ready to rip him to pieces.

I see his eyes, those eyes that were so emotional, as they overtake him.

"I love you." He says in a murmur, and looks up at me, and he disappears.

I scream out his name, a heartbreaking plea, but I recieve no response. I choke out a sob and realize he is gone, no longer by my side, my second half ripped apart from me.

I climb as quickly as I can, out of a prison deemed impossible to escape. I stand at the top and look at the dark night, the moon hanging high above the desert, the villages in the distance. The air is cool in the summer night. He's not here. I remember what he had told me, to run as fast as I can, to run far away and do not look back.

Almost blinded by tears, I run into the night.

* * *

My eyes took a minute to re-focus, my vision faltering and shaky. I blinked a few times, and I was thrown on the ground, knocking the wind out of me for a minute. I get kicked in the stomach, buckling over in pain.

I was thrown in front of a man with combat boots, a shaved head, extremely muscular, a respirator mask on his mouth, dark combat pants and a bullet-proof vest.

I choked on a cough, my wave of blond hair in my eyes. I attempted to sit up, and the two men who were dragging me had two guns pointed at me. The older one looked at the man who was in front of me, combat boots in my face.

I was in Gotham City Hall. I looked up at the man, the monster I was thrown to. I look at his eyes, and I feel so much shock that it almost stops my heart for a minute.

Dark blue, emotional.

Bane.


	2. Fear

"We stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realized they were inside us."  
- **Gil Grissom**

* * *

Gotham City was quiet.

Batman was nowhere to be found in the last few years. The streets, since Harvey Dent's death eight years ago, were clean. No more toxinated water supply or ferries with bombs on them. No organized crime, no villains like the Joker or the Scarecrow rampaging chaos and fear in the streets.

For now.

It was almost eerie as I walked down the streets, dusk silently murging into night.

The sky was pinkish orange, streaks of lean, thin clouds spreaded above the skyscrapers of Gotham. The street lights were on, ready to illuminate the streets. It was beginning to get colder as time began moving closer to the end of October.

I was born and raised in Gotham's Narrows, but escaped to study in Africa when I was in my freshman year of college. While I was there, my parents had since seperated and I was really in no contact with either of them. I stayed in Africa for seven years, and I had been back in Gotham for about three years.

While in Africa, I met a mercenary.

I would be dead if it wasn't for him. I didn't know where he was in the world, or if he was even still alive. I doubted that he was, and it hurt to think about it. I didn't deserve to be saved like he saved me, and I felt guilty for it everyday. Sometimes I'd dream about the night he saved me, waking up in a cold sweat, with tears streaking down my face. It was over ten years ago, but I remembered it as though it was tattooed on my brain.

I loved him.

His eyes, dark blue and intense, looking up at me from the pit.

Sad eyes.

I now worked as a lawyer, a relcutant, boring job in my opinion, but a job that could keep me alive. I wasn't wealthy at any means, no was I terrific at my job. It was a modest living, something to help me get by. I didn't know many people in Gotham, as the people I had grown up with in the Narrows were either dead or criminals by now.

Not to say that _I_ was innocent.

I walked down the streets of Gotham, looking at the skyscrapers that stood like pillars in the sky, the city lights against the oncoming twilight. The bridge in the distance, which in and out of Gotham, was bustling with cars.

A city that had seen so much.

I quietly walked up the stoop to my apartment, an old brownstone that I'd gotten for cheap rent because of it's age. It was in downtown Gotham, an area that before Harvey Dent came along, would be dangerous to live in. Even now, it wasn't the best place to live.

I shivered as an autumn breeze passed through, shaking the tree's leaves in front of the brownstone. I opened the door and stepped into my apartment. It was dark, and a bit cold.

Lonely.

I sighed, hanging up my jacket on the hooks by the door, and hanging up the scarf I had wrapped around my neck. I kicked off my boots by the door. I looked at the mirror that was above where I hung my coat.

I looked so tired, slight circles under my eyes. Dirty blond hair mousy and lank. The small scar that was on my right cheekbone was not very noticable anymore, but I put my fingers over it, feeling the distinction that it was there.

It would _always_ be there.

A perpetual reminder of not only the Lazarus Pit, but of _him_.

I walked into the kitchen, turning on the Gotham news, GCN. Apparently, the Congressman was missing. The whole city was looking for him. I wasn't surprised. I had heard he was drunk who lost himself in vodka and whiskey given the chance. I rolled my eyes.

Not _all_ the scum in this city was accounted for.

I shut the TV off, feeling the need for a drink. Not that I drank often, but lately I had been feeling lonely and just guilty about the life I was leading. I didn't want this life for myself, and I knew it. Not seeing and wine or any sort of alcohol in my apartment, I wrapped the scarf around my neck again and put on my boots, locking my apartment behind me and walking down the street.

By the time I'd reached the nearby bar two blocks away from my apartment, the dusk had evolved into night. It was a moonless night, but the stars were scattered above the city of Gotham as though someone had thrown them there.

I had been to the bar countless times, a bar for those who despised the wealthy and couldn't afford anything nicer. I walked up the steps, opening the door and walking in.

It was a dark and dirty bar, junky. The tables were cherry wood and old, but I didn't really mind it. It was quiet when I walked in, and I sat at the bar, running a hand through my hair and biting my lip, letting out a sigh. I asked for a gin and tonic, and it was given to me by the bartender. GCN was also playing when I sat there, watching as they urgently talked about the missing Congressman.

He hadn't made it home after the celebration of Harvey Dent Day at Bruce Wayne's manor.

It disgusted me that they made so much fuss over this Congressman. He wasn't that important. He was just a man who told others what to do. At least, that's the warped way I saw it.

A few minutes later, a girl entered the bar, dragging a drunken Congressman with her. My eyes widened when she threw him in a seat at the bar a few down from myself. I ignored this, not wanting to get involved.

Nothing in it for _me_.

The girl sat down at a table with Stryver, a creep who desperately wanted Bruce Wayne's fingerprints. I listened to there conversation as I looked at the Congressman, drunk out of his mind. I heard a gun click behind me, and I slightly looked over my shoulder. A gun was being put to the girl's head. I only heard minimal snippets of their conversation.

"They won't go looking for the Congressman in a place like this." Stryver snapped, the gun pointed to the girl. The girl smirked at him, "Really? Because you did just use his cell phone."

Sirens sounded outside, Gotham's GCU surrounding the bar. And then the gunfire began.

I jumped down, off the barstool and over the counter, pressing myself up against the cabinent. The bartender was shot dead and fell next to me, his blood spreading across the flooring and staining my leggings.

My mind flashed to when he killed those mercenaries in my defense, and the crack of their bones. Their blood spreading on the cell's floor, inching closer to me.

I cupped my mouth to hold in gagging from the memory of it.

I crawled, on my hands and knees, out from behind the bar. I got up and sprinted to the backroom of the bar, my chest heaving up and down as I stood in the dark backroom. I heard the police enter the bar, and I panicked. I opened the backdoor and ran out into the night, the city lights of Gotham illuminating against the dark sky. I looked to my left as I stood in the alley outside the bar, seeing cop cars at the end of it. To my right, there was nothing. I didn't need an enounter with the police. And I didn't need to get shot.

So I ran.

I stopped and hid behind a building, pressing my body up against the cold brick. I waited a few minutes, hearing sirens in the distance. I slowly let myself stand back up, and looked around. The only light in the alley was a small streetlight, illuminating only so much of the alleyway.

"Hey, beautiful." A voice murmured to me.

I spun around, startled. Two men stood there with hand guns, and pulled the trigger. I felt an unbelievable shock of pain spread through my abdomen, and I put my hands over it. I gasped, fear flooding my brain and body, then pain.

Horrific _pain_.

Blood spread across my lower stomach and bled through the shirt I wore. My vision became fuzzed and blurry, and the last thing I saw was the two men approach me and grab me.

What felt like hours later as my vision was slowly coming back, I felt myself being dragged by both arms into a tunnel. Surrounding me were men working, or staring down with large guns in their hands. I heard water loudly somewhere nearby. I looked to my left and right and realized I was being dragged by the men who had shot me, my feet dragging behind me. The pain in my stomach was increasingly worse.

The place I was in looked like it was underground. Gotham's water was flowing in it, and I guessed we were in the sewers under Gotham.

I was dragged up a set of stairs. The two men dragged me and threw me in front of them. I closed my eyes and felt tears squeeze out of my closed eyes, streaking down my face and stinging the cut I had formed on my lip. What had I done?

"Why are you here?"

The voice that asked me was manical and frightening. Yet, it was comforting and familiar. I opened my eyes, and saw a man with his back turned to us. His back was scarred and looked like he had been horrificly attacked, and he was extremely muscular. His head was shaven and he looked strong enough to snap a person's neck without a thought.

"Answer him!" One of the men who had shot me shouted, kicking me in the back. I gagged and gasped, trembling, and I began to spit up blood, coughing roughly.

"I asked you." The voice corrected him.

The man stood to his full length. I looked up at him with blurry vision, and I saw that he had a respiration mask on his mouth. His body was unbelievably muscular and bold. He was tall, taller than myself. He questioningly looked at the man who had kicked me, approaching him. The masked man stood right beside me.

"She was creeping around the bar!" The man replied, "She's a lawyer. I think she's trying to stop the deal with Stryver for Wayne's fingerprints, or she's working with the police commissioner!"

"You _think_? You thought she may be working for the police commissioner, so you _shot_ her?" The masked man snapped degradingly.

The man who had kicked me was silent, horrified at knowing he had made a fatal mistake. The masked man approached him, standing right beside me. I trembled as I noticed in horror, looking down, that the blood from my abdomen was staining the concrete beneath me, red smudges staining the ground.

The masked man put a hand against my kidnapper's face, the other on his neck. With one swift motion, he broke his neck, a loud snap that made me gasp and tremble, horrific pain searing through my abdomen. The first kidnapper fell dead beside me, his lifeless eyes staring at me. I gaped at him, shocked. The masked man beckoned for a gun from another one of his men that stood by.

The masked man moved away from me and backed my second kidnapper up against the railings over the waterfall of Gotham's water supply.

"Did you think it was wise?" The masked man hissed through his respirator.

Before the second kidnapper could speak, the masked man pressed a gun to his abdomen and pulled the trigger, sending him to fall to into the water, taking him to be thrown out at the end of Gotham's tunnels. I felt tears streak down my face, terrified and in so much pain.

I heard the masked man approach, his combat boots loud in my ear. He knelt beside me and I told myself not to look up, but my eyes and mind betrayed me. I looked up at him, and trembled. The eyes, dark blue and emotionally angry.

"Bane?" I asked, hardly choking out his name.

And then everything was black.

* * *

_Thanks so so much for the feedback for the introduction! I will try to keep Bane as in-character as possible, and I will not make my OC a Mary-Sue, since those are the worst! Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I have a lot in store for this fanfiction if I get some feedback! _**Please review!**_ :)_


	3. Chaos

"When we take revenge against another, we lose some of our innocence."  
- **Patrice Redd Vecchione**

* * *

I woke up.

I looked down at my body. It was bandaged from my lower waist up over my chest, stopping a few inches below my collar bone. The dried blood from the bar earlier stained my right leg, a dark stain on the legging. I almost gagged at the memory of it.

The banadages had a stain of dried blood where I had been shot, but it had cleary stopped bleeding. I wondered if whoever had bandaged me had removed the bullet from my abdomen, and I quickly hoped they did.

I attempted to bring myself to sit up, but my lower stomach halted me, sending shooting pains like electricity in my body, an electric shock that told my body to stop it.

I winced, gasping, shutting my eyes. I tested my abdomen, and slowly brought myself to sit up, with the help of my hands. My hair fell in my eyes as I pushed myself.

I winced again, huffing and puffing, exhausted from the effort. I raked a hand in my hair, getting it out of my face. A single tear escaped the side of my eye because of the pain and shock that radiated in my abdomen. I attempted to put my bare feet on the concrete flooring beneath the steel table I was on, but a voice stopped me, making me look up to face me.

"No, Chloe. Don't do that to yourself. That will only bring you pain."

It hit me right then.

Bane.

The man I saw was nothing like the man I remembered. Not the kind eyes, not the short brown hair or stubble on his chin. This man was more muscular than anyone I'd ever seen, a respirator strapped to his face, a shaved head. But his emotional, dark blue eyes were Bane's eyes.

He walked to me, the clunking of his combat boots loud as he approached. I looked at him in awe, not knowing who this was and if he was actually the man I used to know. He sat down beside me, his muscles unbelievable, his trapezius muscles jutting out.

I felt so small beside him.

The eyes who had looked at me from the Lazarus Pit, the expression of unbelievable sadness that haunted me everyday. I arched my eyebrows and looked at him sadly, "Bane?"

He only looked at me with his dark blue eyes, and nodded.

He reached out to me and put his hand on my own, a much larger hand over my small one.

Tears spilled down my face slowly and quietly, and I didn't let out a sob. I tried not to cry, but failed at the knowledge of knowing that the man who had saved my own life was able to live his own, no matter how scarred he now was.

With the strength I had, I reached out to him quickly and clung my arms around his neck. He was like stone, rough and as hard as a rock, solid muscle under his skin. I held onto him like I would never let go.

His hand reached up and put it on my forearm reassuringly.

I buried my face in the crook of his neck, hot tears staining his skin. I let out a low gasp as I inhaled, my eyes closed against his neck. I kissed his neck, a small press of my lips to his flesh.

I lifted my head and looked at him.

He ran a hand in my hair, and looked at me with emotion. His eyes were glassed over, and he stared at me quietly.

I ran a hand down his back, feeling the jagged scars that were deep in his back, a few scattered along his sides and lower back, and a massive thin scar running from his mid-back up to the back of his neck.

_How did he get those? _I asked myself.

I trembled a little when I felt his own hand on my bandaged abdomen, gently touching the wound. I let out a quivering sigh, and to my surprise, his touch didn't hurt me. It was tender, but I felt no pain at his contact.

I looked at him, and I put my fingers gently on his respirator, feeling the tubes that held the device together. He watched me do it, the tiredness and sadness that I'd seen ten years ago returning into his eyes. I searched his face of emotion and quietly dropped my hand.

I didn't know where to begin with him.

"I missed you so badly," I attempted to choke out, "I never thought I would see you again. I thought you were dead, that I could never say another word to you. It has been a living hell without you, and I'm sorry that you wasted your chance of survival for me."

He arched his eyebrows, " I did not 'waste' anything, Chloe. I gave up my survival for the reason you are sitting in front of me. Look at you now. What if I had not been in the Pit?"

I nodded, tears still streaking down my face, and looked down at myself, knowing he was right. But I didn't want him to be right. He was seven years older than myself, and he was referring to the fact that if he had not saved me, I won't have grown into the woman I was now.

"What did they do to you?" I asked him, feeling a lump form in my throat. My voice was quivering, physically not allowing myself to cry. He looked so different than the man I had once knew.

"They inflicted _pain_," He said simply, leaving out the violent details, "It was pain beyond what I intially thought I was able to handle. And the only way to stop the pain was this. But while I was down in the pit, I realized I was being molded into darkness. Raised by it."

There was a change in him.

Infuriation.

His respirator took up the majority of his face, and I still remembered the handsome face that used to smile at me. The way he looked at my when he smiled, like he knew something I didn't and thought it was hilarious. It was almost hard to grasp the memory now, as some memories slowly fade away in time.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, "I'm sorry I couldn't stop this from happening to you. Why are you in Gotham?"

He looked at me logically. I guessed that if he wasn't wearing the respirator, he would be smugly smirking, his eyebrows arched.

"No apologies, Chloe. It doesn't matter now. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask." He said, standing up to face me. "And now?" I asked him, almost afraid of his reply.

"I'm Gotham's reckoning."

And instantly I knew.

A man, changed into a monster.

* * *

_I can't thank you all enough for the positive and many reviews/follows/favorites for this fanfiction. Thank you so much! I hope you liked this chapter, and to be honest, Bane is harder to write than I thought. I am not going to hesitate to make him a bit gentle while he is with Chloe in private, however by no means will I make him a weak sissy. I hope I kept him in character, as I'm trying to show how Chloe is going to notice the disturbing change in him._

_In case anyone was wondering, the title of this fanfiction came from the song _"Time"_ by Hans Zimmer, off the _"Inception"_ soundtrack. I like to think it's Bane/Chloe theme. I hope you are liking this fanfiction, so please let me know!_

_Reviews would be amazing! _:)


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